


The Good Kind of Surprise

by EtherealPrince



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Alpha Charles, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Charles Xavier has a Ph.D in Adorable, Erik is a Sweetheart, Fluff, M/M, Mpreg, Omega Erik, nothing but fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:02:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27627184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EtherealPrince/pseuds/EtherealPrince
Summary: erik and charles discuss painting the nursery for their yet-unborn child, and realizations happen. pure fluff, that's all there is to this.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Comments: 6
Kudos: 78





	The Good Kind of Surprise

“Charles? I need help.”

Erik watches as his husband skids into the living room on socked feet, catching himself on a corner. He looks worried, wide-eyed and breathing hard like he had sprinted. The house wasn’t _that_ big, surely.

“What’s wrong? Are you alright, is the baby alright?” He pants, and Erik’s lips quirk up into a smile. He looks far too anxious for a Saturday morning.

Erik waves him over--he’s sitting on the couch, laptop balanced on what’s left of his lap. Charles approaches him warily.

“Look.” Erik says, tugging Charles down onto the sofa next to him. Charles immediately curls into his side, splaying one hand protectively over his belly. “What color should I order?”

Charles lets out a long, forceful breath, and Erik can practically see the tension leave his shoulders. Ever since he had gotten pregnant, it was like this, and it nearly drove him mad. Erik thought _he_ was the neurotic one in the relationship, but how the tables had turned. 

“You scared me.” Charles grumbles. Erik leans his head over to plant his lips on his alpha’s temple and laughs. 

“Sorry. I just want your opinion- for the nursery?”

Charles hums. With a bit of shuffling, he nudges Erik’s hand off of his mousepad and scrolls down the page of the paint company website, browsing through shades of yellow, green, blue, pink, purple.

Asking him for help was more of a formality than anything--Charles was not renowned for being good at making decisions, but Erik wanted him to be involved in the process, at least.

Just so, Charles makes a distressed sound and huffs, plonking his chin on Erik’s shoulder. “They’re all too nice, I can’t decide.”

Erik thought so.

“Do you want to pick three and narrow it down to one? Or do two walls one color and two another?” He offers, and Charles sighs, tilts his head into Erik’s neck. He makes another pitiful little sound.

“I don’t know...I feel like I’ll regret not choosing everything but the ones I chose.” He says, laughing. Erik can understand that one, but on his honor the walls of the baby’s first room are not going to be _beige._

He shifts his posture slightly on the couch to ease the ache in his back, and turns his head so that his lips touch Charles’ hair. “Well, what are we going to do?”

The alpha stalls for a moment, and then: “You can surprise me?”

Erik’s eyebrows raise. “I never thought I’d hear you say that. About anything.”

Charles’ chest jerks as he laughs softly. “I just feel like you have a better instinct about these kinds of things.”

“Because I’m the one who’s pregnant? I feel like that’s a cop-out.”

“No!” Charles insists. “No, it’s not. I trust you!”

“Do you trust me not to choose royal violet and maroon?”

At this, Charles looks up at him, and reaches up to tweak his nose. Erik makes a face. “I do, but only because I know you’re not stupid enough to do that anymore. Maybe if we were both a few years younger.”

Erik rubs his palm over his nose, and then drops it to his stomach over where Charles’ hand still lay. “Maybe I will, just to really shock you.”

Charles shakes his head and he looks infuriatingly confident about it. “No you won’t.”

“Are you reading my mind to get that answer?”

“No, I just know you very well, my love.”

He couldn’t argue with that one.

“Fine. I’ll surprise you and you can find out when the paint gets here.”

Charles pats his shoulder and sits up, straightening out his arms so that the joints crack. “When should they?”

Erik squints at the webpage-- “It says to allow two weeks for shipping.”

“Then in two weeks, yes.” And then he pauses for a second. “Isn’t your appointment next week?”

Erik thinks, and then nods. “Yeah, on Thursday.”

“Hm. Okay. Want me to come?”

“No, it’s fine, you have class that day. I’ll text you.”

Satisfied, Charles stretches his back too, and then stands, sliding his hands into his pants pockets. “I’m excited.” He says with a grin, and whether he meant about Erik’s next appointment with his doctor or to start painting the nursery Erik doesn’t know. Maybe both. He grins back.

“So am I.”

\------------

The paint came two weeks later, as promised. Erik picked them up at the door and they floated behind him as he walked upstairs to put them down in the nursery, which was still covered in tarps and bare-walled. Soon it will be a depressing beige no longer, he reassured himself, and he’ll stop having nightmares about his and Charles’ child growing up to be an accountant.

Later that morning, he changed into an old v-neck and jeans and struggled in pulling his work boots on even though Charles offered to help, and the two of them taped off the edges of the nursery walls and dumped all the paint brushes and rollers into a pile on the floor along with the paint mixing trays they had found in the garage.

Regrettably, just from that, Erik was already sweating. Maybe they should have done this sooner, he thought, but then he reminded himself that if they didn’t get the nursery all done before the baby came they never would. 

Charles put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”

He nods, trying to get his breathing back in check. Maybe he should just make Charles get the lower halves of the walls.

“Yeah.” Erik says. “Here, I’ll show you the paint--”

He flicks his wrist and one of the paint buckets floats lazily up into the air and hovers in front of him, at waist level. Its seal reveals nothing about its color, and the name printed on top is just a number, not a descriptive word.

“Number 409, eh? Sounds lovely.” Charles teases, and Erik smirks. The top of the can pops off with a twitch of his finger and sets itself down on the ground, leaving Charles to peer in and see what his omega had chosen.

“Blue.” He says, conversationally. “Cute!”

Erik looks at him.

Charles looks back, quirks an eyebrow. “What?”

After a second, Erik sighs and shakes his head, though he’s smiling. “Nothing. I’ll get the top halves of the walls and you’ll get the bottom halves?”

“Sure.” Charles agrees, and after Erik sets the bucket down they get to work.

When they’re about half a wall into the job, Erik pauses from outlining the window in blue to look down at Charles, trying not to get any paint on the floor.

“You know, that website delivers faster than they said they did.”

“Do they?” Charles says, dipping his brush in the paint again.

“Mhm. It only took about a week instead of two.”

Charles hums, and they lapse back into silence. Erik watches him out of the corner of his eye as he goes back to painting, waiting for him to get it.

Sure enough, after a few minutes Charles’ hand that’s holding his paint brush stops.

“When’d you order it?” He asks.

“Last Friday.”

Charles is silent. Erik slows down and gradually turns his head to watch him think.

“It’s blue.” Charles says, very quietly. He’s looking down at the paintbrush in his hand.

Erik says nothing.

Turning his eyes up to look at his husband, Charles suddenly looks like he’s about to cry. “Blue?”

There it is.

Erik smiles, holds his hands out with his palms facing up and shrugs. 

Charles drops his paintbrush and stands up, approaching Erik while his eyes very obviously flicker from his face down to his stomach and back up again. He brackets Erik’s belly with both hands, palms gently landing on his sides. Blue eyes meet grey eyes and Charles stutters, trying to speak but failing.

For the first time in a week, Erik lets his shields down around his mind and shows Charles everything he had learned at his doctor’s appointment. Charles laughs, awe-stricken.

“Good surprise?” Erik asks him quietly, and Charles’ answer is to lean up and kiss him.

The kiss tastes salty, and when they pull back Charles is definitely teary-eyed. Erik brushes his thumbs under his eyes and wipes away any moisture there, apologetic. He never liked making Charles cry, even if it was because he was happy.

After a second Charles sighs out dreamily, tilting his head down to Erik’s stomach. “Oh, god, we’re having a boy.” He whispers, reverently. “A boy!”

Erik can’t help his grin when he tells Charles “I waited to order the paint until I knew for sure.”

“I love you.” Charles sighs, leaning his head against his shoulder so he could still look down. Erik chuckles, looping one arm around Charles’ thin waist while his other hand goes to the base of his belly. The baby had been awake for a while now, moving and shifting around inside of him, but only now could he feel it from the outside. Maybe what Charles had read in those mutant pregnancy books was right--children of telepaths could sense emotions while still in utero.

Erik and Charles stand there like that for a good minute, not talking, just breathing each other in and marveling at what they had created. Erik isn’t expecting Charles to say what he does when he finally speaks up again, and it makes him freeze.

“I want to name him after your father.” He murmurs. 

They both knew Erik’s parents were a sensitive subject. He could hear the love in Charles’ voice, though, the compassion, and it soothed him. 

“Maybe just a middle name for that.” He says quietly. Charles nods against him. 

“Middle name Jakob, last name Xavier-Lehnsherr?”

It was kind of funny--they hadn’t even decided on a first name yet. It was easier to hear his father’s name when it was followed by his husband’s, Erik thinks.

“Yes,” He says, wondering if the baby could hear this too and agreed with them. He hadn’t stopped moving, that was for sure. “I like the sound of that.”

“Perfect.” Charles breathes.

Erik agrees-- perfect.

**Author's Note:**

> ads on youtube are getting infuriatingly better, because one of them inspired this little drabble. i will never buy paint from a website in my life, but i sure will write cherik fanfiction about it!
> 
> please comment and tell me what you think, and thank you for reading :] <3


End file.
